Wild Weekend Weather

It was an interesting weekend.  Had my weather app chime in on Friday to warn of impending high winds on Saturday but didn’t really think too much about it.  We get so many weather warnings, watches, advisories, you name it that you can’t get too worked up.  Tell me there’s a tornado bearing down or a blizzard on the way and I’ll pay more attention.  OK, to be honest, if I got a tornado warning, I’d probably run to look outside to check for myself.

We went to a local apple orchard on Saturday.  I think that’s a northern thing to do.  Not sure they have a lot of apple places in the south.  Maybe they do but I think they are more common here.  This place used to just be very low key with rows of apple trees and a little store where you could be apples and cider.  Best cider around, by the way.  They also have pumpkins and they used to have hay rides out to the pumpkin patch.

Over the years, they’ve started to upgrade the experience bit by bit.  They added a grill and now serve hot dogs and brats on Saturdays.  Then, they added a cafe/sweet shop where you could get caramel apples and other things.  Now they have a corn maze and some farm animals and several other assorted experiences for kids and it has gone from a sleepy little orchard to a destination.  They now have off duty cops directing traffic and they’ve had to expand their “parking lot” which is really just grassy areas that aren’t used for anything.  The place was packed.  It made me feel good though.  And I got a cider slush even though it wasn’t that warm so it was all good.

Later in the afternoon the winds picks up and our power flickered a couple of times.  We ended up going out for dinner because that’s what weekends are for.  My wife and I aren’t foodies – we’ll eat just about anywhere depending on what we are in the mood for.  Heck, we were at Cracker Barrel last night because sometimes you just got to have their breakfast for dinner.  Anyway, on Saturday, we were going to this Asian restaurant that we like.  There aren’t many places we frequent regularly because there are lots of choices and we like lots of places.  But we go there a few times a year.  Because it is a bit of a drive and we’ve been burned before, I did a quick check on their website and it was up and running.

Well, we get there and there is a lock on the door which is not a good sign.  My wife looks in the window and they’ve moved all the kitchen stuff into what used to be the main seating area.  Two other couples showed up just at the same time we did and so we all ended up disappointed.  This happens from time to time because I guess the restaurant business ain’t easy.  Sometimes you drive by a place and it has changed into something completely different.  We’ve been in places where you can get a death vibe and you know it doesn’t have long on the earth but we didn’t get that here.  Wonder what happened.  The funny thing is that while we were in a restaurant a couple of doors down having dinner, I checked the website again and there was a link to order take out.  I was seriously tempted to see what would happen but decided not to.

The drive back was interesting because the winds had seriously picked up.  Most of our trees still have the majority of their leaves and we are nowhere near peak color so there is a lot of green on the trees.  Well, this wind was just stripping leaves like crazy and blowing them all over the place.  Even driven through a leaf storm?  That’s kind of what it was like at times.  Weird.

Then, we get home and the garage door won’t go up.  This is not a good sign.  Go in the front door and everything is dark.  Managed to access the website of the power company on the phone only to see the map saying there are outages all over the city and that they are working on it.  Not wanting to kick a power company when they are down because I know nobody really thinks about the power until it is not there but they had a note on their website that they had brought in extra crews because of the wind warning.  Yeah, how’d that work out for you.

With no power, phones couldn’t be charged so that took away a major source of entertainment.  Fortunately, my Nook was fully charged so we sat in the dark with a few flashlights just waiting for the lights to come back on.  We eventually decided just to pack it in for the night and that’s when the lights came back on.  Then, you get the fun of resetting every clock that went out.  Our water softener schedule got all messed up because it was doing the recharge cycle at 8 the next morning.  Guess I’ll have to figure out how to reset the thing.

Lots and lots of leaves and branches down in the yard.  Had the top of one maple tree snap off and get stuck on some other trees so I had to go out the next day and get it loose and then cut it up as best as possible.  Could have been worse so I’m not complaining.

Guess the next time the weather app warns of winds, I’ll pay a little more attention.